


Hank's Notebook of Very Important Observations

by Dlvvanzor



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Connor makes Columbo references, Connor puts things in his mouth, Demisexual Hank Anderson, Hank Anderson and Connor Live Together, Hank makes a list, M/M, Pining Hank Anderson, references to past suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 04:23:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17073404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dlvvanzor/pseuds/Dlvvanzor
Summary: It had all started with one tiny, errant thought: What was Connor programmed to do when... Well.  Just, what exactly was Connor programmed to do?





	1. Chapter 1

Hank was having a serious problem.

It was a problem that wouldn't have been possible six months ago, before Connor moved in with him after Markus' march.  Also, if it had occurred then, it wouldn't have seemed like a problem at the time because they had an android uprising on their hands and that was a bit distracting. 

Now, though, things had been calm.  He'd been sober for five months (Connor kept throwing away his booze and even when he hid it Connor the advanced detective model found it without apparent effort).  After a lot of lobbying, androids were getting legal rights and settling down.  They could own property, marry, and it was illegal to hire them for less than minimum wage.  In fact, Connor had been hired for significantly _more_ than minimum wage by the police and had gone so far as to request that Hank not be fired for punching out Perkins and calling him a cocksucker.  

Things were... good.  Really good.  Which was why Hank's problem that was absolutely not a problem seemed like such a problem, now.

Hank, the man who had hated androids, the man who’d had bumper stickers declaring this hatred (hateful words scratched off, now), the man who had seriously considered getting a tattoo of his favorite anti-android campaign slogan which compared androids to microwave ovens, was crushing hard on his android roommate.

(It was amazing to have nothing to worry about but this.  It was amazing to not want to die, to not lay awake all night, to wake up without a debilitating headache.)

Hank had tried to squash it-- he really had.  He'd tried all the classics: avoiding eye contact, thinking of all the things that made Connor infuriating, repeating to himself over and over that Connor was just a friend.  All that effort, though, just resulted in him thinking about Connor more, and it had entirely backfired when what had been a small crush, a mere attraction, had exploded into something more appropriate to a middle school student than to a fully-grown human being.

It had all started with one tiny, errant thought:

What was Connor programmed to do when...

Well.

Just, what exactly was Connor programmed to do?

Hank had tried looking it up.  He’d started innocently enough with a simple Google search on how androids fucked and it had devolved to Hank watching dozens upon dozens of hours of… android videos.  And he wasn't proud of that.  It hadn’t even helped-- porn was great but it was fake and it was difficult to know if any of the androids featured were even deviant.  Of course, none of the videos were about an RK-800.  They tended to star 400 models, but Connor was much, much more advanced.  He'd seen Connor do things in moments that other androids couldn't do in weeks.  (To be fair, he'd also seen Connor smash through a window only to tumble to the floor and there had been that time he’d looked at a half-rotten murder victim and made his first deduction of 'this man is deceased.'  He was brilliant but he was definitely a prototype.)  So what would a model who was designed to be brilliant and definitely  _not_ designed to take to bed, a model who was worth, in his own words, 'a small fortune,' be like?

Hank was, much to his dismay, obsessed with knowing the answer, and after all of his ‘don't think about Connor naked you fucking pervert' methods failed, he resorted to simply staring. 

The staring had made it worse, of course.  Watching a beautiful, brilliant person be beautiful and brilliant, all while wrapped in an absolutely _incredible_ body, was the opposite of a cold shower. 

Connor noticed immediately but he didn't seem to mind.  He'd commented, too, which had made Hank want to fling himself off the bridge where he really should have shot Connor six months ago and saved himself this crisis.  On a self-preservation impulse, Hank had just said that he wanted to compare Connor before and after deviancy, and the android had not only thought this was a fascinating idea but had suggested several ways to document his observations, and asked if he could please see his write-up when he was done. 

So, Hank had homework now.  But the write-up was a problem for later and for now, it provided an excellent cover-story for his staring.   

He kept a notebook because he knew Connor wasn't going to forget.

Observation 1:  Connor keeps putting things in his mouth.

At first, Hank had thought he'd just suddenly started noticing this.  Eventually he became certain that it wasn't his imagination.  Before, Connor mostly just put blood and Thirium in his mouth, which was disgusting but at least it served a function.  Now, he'd chew lightly on his thumb, lick the corner of his mouth, bite on the end of a pen... Hank had even seen him with a toothpick, once, and when questioned the android had said he was just trying it out.  Either way, the boy definitely had an oral fixation, which was interesting for a person that couldn't eat.

Observation 2:  Connor is very flexible.

Connor was surprisingly flexible.  Hank had seen him drop something behind himself and bend over more than in half to pick it up (again- prototype.  He didn't always do things the easiest or most natural way).  He'd suddenly become interested in his toenails one day and had sat on Hank's (their) sofa, taken off his shoe, bent his foot up to his face, and examined them, eventually reporting that his toenails were functioning normally, whatever that meant.  Hank had also not failed to notice the time when Connor had stretched-- Hank had been too busy choking on his own spit to ask why an android needed to stretch-- and willfully dislocated his shoulders.  (Connor had noticed Hank choking and had come to save him, popping his shoulder back in with a shrug which had calmed Hank considerably, enough to ask why he could do such a disgusting thing, and Connor had answered that it would help if anyone ever grabbed his arms from behind but CyberLife wasn't going to include it in future Connors, which Hank confirmed was a good idea.)

Observation 3: Connor can blush.

And Hank knew it was hardware, because blushing involved blood and Connor's blood was blue, but Connor didn't blush blue, he blushed red.  Hank had absolutely no idea why they would program blushing into an android, but he had to admit it was kind of.  Fetching.  Connor blushed when he was embarrassed, now.  Hank assumed he'd never blushed before deviancy because non-deviant androids don’t get embarrassed.  Now he sometimes did.  Not often-- the boy was largely unabashed, unashamed of starting conversations with Hank while Hank was in the shower and pulling back the curtain to check his facial expression, unbothered by Hank's teasing.  The only time he'd seen Connor blush-- but he'd definitely seen it-- was when Connor tripped on Sumo and landed on his back.  He'd scrambled to his feet, beet-red, checked on Sumo, apologized formally to the unharmed dog, then fled the situation while Hank laughed openly.

Hank wondered if he'd also get flushed in other situations.

Observation 4: Connor is extremely curious.

This was probably to do with his programming as a detective, but Connor could never leave anything alone, now that he had the free will to do whatever he liked.  When Hank wouldn't tell him something, Connor wore him down until he did (Hank didn't have a single secret left, at this point).  When Connor found something he didn't understand, he locked himself away with it and the internet until he did.  He'd found an antique radio in Hank's attic and had demanded to be allowed to disassemble and reassemble it.  The radio had worked better, when he finished.  They now had it in the living room. 

When Connor was disassembling something to see how it worked, he had the intense focus of a surgeon and his hands moved faster than any human's could.  Sometimes, Connor looked at Hank like that when Hank was being too human and not making sense, like when he'd decided to stay up late watching a basketball game he'd already seen and had recorded, knowingly condemning himself to exhaustion at work the next day.  Connor had looked at him that way, then.

Hank wondered if he'd look like that at a person he was trying to take apart.  (He couldn't think that thought for long-- he always had to push that one away.)

Observation 5:  Connor likes to smell things.

Again, it was probably because he was designed as a detective, but Connor liked to smell things.  It didn't seem to matter what, and he hadn't done it before except during investigations.  Now, he smelled everything.  When Hank cooked (microwaved), Connor came over to smell it.  When one of them cleaned, Connor could often be found smelling the chemicals.  (Hank had Googled to make sure that that wasn't going to hurt him somehow, give him some kind of android brain damage.)  He'd caught him burying his face in the dog's fur while giving him a good scratch, and either that was a cuddle or it was a sniff or both.  When he smelled things, he got his nose in really, really close to them, and it didn't seem to matter if it was a good smell or a bad smell, since it was all just data to him, anyway.  The effect was a nuzzle and a concentrated expression, related to the curiosity and the dissection.  Hank strongly suspected that he'd want to smell.  Whoever.  Whatever.

That was the first ten pages of his notebook, and Hank wasn't slowing down.  It was easier than ignoring it had been, but it was still pretty rough.  It was even rougher when Connor decided it was time to follow up and find out what Hank had observed.

He did this with absolutely no warning.

"I'd like to see the progress on your analysis of my behavior pre- and post-deviancy," he announced one evening while Hank was watching TV. 

Hank had been prepared for this.  "I'm not done," he said easily, because he wasn't.

"That's alright."  Connor sat down next to him and leaned forward, picking up the notebook.  It was in his hands before Hank even had time to consider stopping him.  He flipped it open, reading so fast that it looked like a parody.  "Fascinating."

"Don't you think this will compromise the integrity of the investigation?" Hank tried.

"No," Connor said simply.  "Do I really keep putting things in my mouth?" he pondered.  "I hadn't noticed."

"This is definitely gonna compromise the investigation," Hank tried again.  "If you know you're doing it, you're gonna act different..."

"No I won't," Connor dismissed.

It was objectively untrue, and Hank knew Connor knew it, but that android could be really pushy when he wanted to be.

(Observation 6: Connor could be bossy, pushy, insolent, completely dominating when he wanted to, and always with a bright smile.  Other times, though, he simply went with the flow, let Hank push him around.  It was difficult to predict in advance which one it would be at any given time.  Sometimes he reacted differently to the same situation on different days.)

"Good work so far, Lieutenant," Connor praised, and Hank felt weirdly proud of himself for how well he was stalking his roommate.  "Please, continue your investigation."

Was Connor asking him to keep staring at him?  Was Connor making innuendo?  ...Did androids understand innuendo?  Hank had such a prob-

"Yes, I am suggesting you continue observing me."

Hank just about dropped what he was holding, except he wasn't holding anything.  Could Connor read his mind?

"And no, I can't read your mind.  I'm just accustomed to your nonverbals and I've noticed signs of desire steadily increasing in your behavior over the last six months, roughly the time I became deviant.  I confirmed this while doing my customary survey of your internet search history for signs of alcohol relapse or suicidal ideation."

So his android knew what he'd been looking at online. 

"It's natural to be curious," Connor went on.  "I am an important figure in your life and a member of a different but compatible species."  He smiled slightly, that cocky one that made Hank angry and also feel like he needed to sit down.  "Besides," he said, voice taking on that tone, the one that told Hank that he was cheerfully messing with him like when he'd tossed him into the bathtub, "It's no wonder that these thoughts have occurred to you.  I do have a habit of putting things in my mouth."

That answered Hank's other question about androids and innuendo.

"So…" Hank hazarded.  "I'm guessing you're not.  Disturbed by this revelation?"

"It's hardly a revelation, Lieutenant.  As I said I noticed your changed behaviors as you started noticing mine."

Hank sighed, emotions too fried to even begin to discern how he was feeling about all of this.  "Great."

"And one more thing," Connor said, and didn't he always have to add one more thing?  Had he been programmed with Columbo references or were they incidental?  "To answer your other unverbalized question.  I may be a police model, but I come programmed with everything older models can do."  He quirked an eyebrow.  "Cleaning, for example."

Hank's mouth fell open and he snatched the notebook away from Connor.  "Okay, no more book for you."

"Observation," Connor said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.  "Hank Anderson can blush."

And without a word, Connor did possibly the first cool thing Hank had ever seen him do: he stood, he smiled, demure, and he walked away without tripping on the dog.

And Hank thought he'd had problems, before.


	2. Chapter 2

Another six months had passed, and Connor had been living with Hank for a full year, nearly to the day.

Hank had so many fucking problems.

They were such incredibly amazingly wonderful problems that Hank had actually not been happier in recent memory. 

Hank’s notebook of observations was getting excessively long, now.  It filled several—currently he was on his third.  There were a lot of things to notice about Connor.  Even more as of one month ago, when Connor had rolled his eyes, sighed hugely, and jumped Hank’s bones.

Observation 1: It is possible make an android breathe harder.

It wasn’t noticeable, but a certain amount of respiration was required to sustain android life.  They could be choked or smothered; it would just take longer than it would for a human to suffocate.  Connor said the chest movement up and down only existed because humans got creeped out by human-shaped entities that didn’t breathe.  Connor said he didn’t breathe enough to make a human chest expand but that air was necessary for his biocomponents.  Apparently it was also used for speech, which was produced similarly to how humans produced it to allow for the correct pauses and inflection. As someone who couldn’t even program his phone Hank had gotten a little lost in the details, but he _did_ understand that if air was necessary, then it followed that some situations required less respiration—sitting, for example—and some situations required more respiration, such as extreme physical exertion.

So if he exerted himself enough, Connor would start to breathe harder, and if he was really, really exerting himself, he’d breathe the equivalent of a slight human pant. 

When combined with Connor’s desire to smell everything and his propensity to put his face in whatever he was smelling, Hank had discovered that he really liked having Connor’s face buried in his neck, breathing hard, nuzzling closer, clinging…

Observation 2: Androids aren’t cold, but they aren’t exactly warm, either.  Anywhere.

There was heat from the friction of his joints and from the movement of his Thirium and biocomponents, but it was only incidental.  Android skin absorbed human warmth pretty effectively, but it still never felt as warm to the touch as human skin did.  Hank had confirmed that this was true everywhere on Connor’s external body.  And his internal body.  At least what he could get at.

Observation 3: Androids don’t ejaculate.

When Connor came, nothing physically left his body and he was immediately ready to go again.  When Hank figured out that this wasn’t just because he was so damn attractive that Connor couldn’t stand it, he realized it was because there simply was no reason not to go again and again and again if you were an android.

Hank had needed to define and then explain the human refractory period, which thankfully Connor had respected from that point on…

Observation 4: Android orgasms.

Hank had this one cover two separate categories: androids having orgasms and androids giving orgasms to other people.

Hank had slept with a few men and a few women in his time—didn’t see much of a difference between them when it came down to it—so he was completely sure that the fact that the orgasms were the best of his life was a function of Connor being an android.  It turned out that androids, or at least Connor, could go for a really, _really_ long time, and once they’d discovered something you liked it was physically impossible for them to forget it, and their ability to macro…

(There had been that article about android sex being better than sex with humans, a little while ago, and he’d seen that banner on one of the android porn websites he’d investigated at the beginning that said ‘ _once you go bot, you never go back.’_ )

When Hank eventually asked Connor what an orgasm feels like to androids, he’d struggled to explain.  The mechanics behind their respectively abilities to detect sensations were too different; they would probably never be able to understand each other that way.  He had, however, stressed that it was highly pleasurable and he didn’t want Hank to stop causing them any time soon, and then he’d dropped to his knees and demonstrated how much he liked putting things in his mouth and Hank had forgotten to ask any follow-up questions.

Observation 5: Connor is loud in bed.

In retrospect, Hank realized this one shouldn’t have surprised him.  Connor as a person never shut the hell up.  He always _had_ a comment and had _to_ comment, so why would it be any different in sex?  He was constantly _commenting_ , sometimes praising, sometimes correcting, sometimes instructing, sometimes bloody scolding him.

When he wasn’t talking, he was still making a lot of noise.  (That, Hank didn’t mind.  Not at all.  Why a detective model had been programmed with such a wide variety of filthy, gorgeous noises, he would never know, but he wanted to shake CyberLife’s damn collective hand for it.)

When he was coming he made even more noise, and he moved a lot, and he dug his fingers in, and had Hank mentioned that he made a _lot_ of noise?  Hank didn’t know how good his neighbor’s walls were but if they weren’t legitimately soundproofed then they knew that Hank was having sex again and that it was coming along rather nicely.

Observation 6: Androids have a sleep mode.

That one wasn’t new to him, but knowing it happened and having it happen next to him were entirely different.  The first time Connor had jumped his bones had been on the couch, but the second time had been in his bed when Connor finally got tired of waiting for Hank to process what he’d very, very willingly participated in.  After they’d done it that time, Connor verbalizing mind-bendingly into the pillow and Hank hanging on for dear life (and it was dear again, because of this stupid android), Hank had fallen asleep only to wake up later and find that Connor had fallen asleep (entered sleep mode?) next to him.

He laid very still and didn’t breathe visibly when he slept, and Hank had had a horrible moment where he thought he’d somehow fucked his android to death.  Then he’d noticed the dimmed LED and put it together: Connor slept most nights, at least if there was nothing in particular he wished to do.  He said he could sleep as much as he liked but at the minimum had to sleep a few times a week for a few hours at a time or his systems would start to overheat.

Hank had determined quickly that Connor was very cute when he slept.  He’d also determined that if he made sure Connor’s arm was over him when he entered sleep mode, it wouldn’t move away until Connor woke up.

Observation 7: Connor genuinely likes Hank.

It was the only explanation for how Connor would seek him out, would sit beside him and watch whatever game was on television, would do things just to please him.  He told jokes, sometimes, which usually made Hank laugh more because of poor delivery than anything else.  (‘ _Lieutenant Anderson.  Why was the man unable to locate his map?’  ‘Dunno, Connor.  Why?’  ‘Because he did not recall the location of his map.’_ )  He smiled when Hank greeted him, always said good morning and good night.  They’d discuss their latest case into the small hours of the morning and Connor had even tried listening to Hank’s music, but had said he didn’t see what humans liked about it.

They also fought a lot, because Connor was impossible and Hank was an asshole, but it never got to him the way fights with his wife used to because when they cooled off it always went away without them discussing it for hours and hours, right back into the easy companionship.

Observation 8: Hank genuinely liked Connor, too.

The guy made him laugh.  He’d pulled him out of the gutter, metaphorically and once literally.  He’d quite dramatically saved his life on several occasions, and he was also the primary reason Hank was no longer interested in killing himself.  He was the best friend Hank had ever had.  He was patient until he’d had enough, kind until he started being a dick, brilliant until he suddenly was such an idiot that he wondered how much money, exactly, CyberLife had invested in producing him.  He understood Hank’s wisecracks maybe 50% of the time and he spent a lot of time telling him the ingredients of his ‘food,’ but there it was: Connor was his best friend, and he couldn’t really imagine a better one.

* * *

 

Hank’s problems were multiplying, but as they did they were also getting smaller. 

Problem: What was Connor’s birthday and was he supposed to get him something?

Problem: Was he possibly falling in love with Connor, or did he just love the guy so much that he couldn’t tell?

Problem: How to get Connor to stop throwing away those frozen breakfast sandwiches Hank liked, just because they contained enough sodium to kill a man.

Problem: How to get out of Connor’s frightening new fitness plan.

And the biggest problem in his life, now, the one that he spent the most time trying to solve, the one thing that was most important to him, his ‘primary mission’ as Connor might call it--

Problem: How did he make sure Connor spent every day of his life smiling?


End file.
